Perdida

It's hard to believe I've been in Honduras over 6 months!  Time has really been flying, especially recently.

I just got back to site after a longer-than-planned vacation out west.  I went for the weekend, but ended up getting another bout of amoebas and had to stay longer (trust me, you do NOT want to take a bus down a bumpy dirt road when you have a stomach parasite!).  I was in touch with my host family, but I didn't communicate at all with my work partners and missed a whole week of work.  I was surprised (and perhaps a little offended) that no one called me to check in, but when I got back to work on Monday I had the following conversation with nearly every one of my coworkers.

Counterpart: ANDREA!!!  YOU ARE HERE!  YOU ARE ALIVE!

Me: Yes, I am here!  Sorry I haven't been in touch, I got sick with amoebas again.

Counterpart: SICK!  We thought we had lost you!

Me: Lost?  That's ridiculous.  I'm right here.

Counterpart: What a relief!  I was sure you were gone.  I searched and searched for you, went all over Honduras, and asked the police.  And when I didn't find you I figured you had gone back to the states!

Me: Why didn't you call me to check in?

Counterpart: I was supposed to call you?

It's funny, I talked to several PC volunteers before I left and they all mentioned how hard it is to convey experiences to people back in the states.  And it's true.  This above conversation, while completely normal for volunteers, probably sounds ridiculous to someone outside of Peace Corps.  The reality is that whenever we leave town, people assume we've gone off to travel (pasear) and that we might not come back.  Yet no one calls us to check in, which would easily solve the confusion.

It's hard to describe some of my experiences on this blog because I have to include so much context, and I worry that it will be confusing for someone outside of Honduras to interpret.  For example, if I were to complain on here about how my counterparts never call me to tell me about meetings (or to check in when I don't show up to work for a week), you might think they are just bad counterparts or that they don't like me.  But that isn't the case.  I have amazing counterparts... the communication problems are just a cultural obstacle that all volunteers face.

Another example is that it's normal in Honduras to go to meetings an hour or more late.  If the meeting starts at 9, get there around 10 and you'll be on time.  One day I arrived at 8:45 for an 8:00 meeting and my counterpart said to me, ¨you need to get used to Honduran time, but I guess we can start early.¨  (For those of you that read that and think, ¨how perfect for Andrea, Queen of Lateness,¨ I assure you that even my normal tardiness pales in comparison to the cultural norm here.)  It's also common to cancel or reschedule meetings or events without notifying anyone.

What this more generally means is that we have to put in a lot of effort to integrate into our work environments, and while our work is appreciated, we often don't get the same level of communication and accountability from our Honduran counterparts.  There is a lot of initiative required to be a successful volunteer.  Volunteers that don't take that initiative tend to have less work, and may eventually become viewed by their communities as ¨Cuerpo de Paseo¨ (a pun on Cuerpo de Paz that basically equates us with tourists).

So if you disappear for a week like I did, your coworkers will assume you have lost interest or are off traveling until you take the initiative to get back in touch with them.  And when you do, they are surprised.  I am glad to report now that I am no longer ¨perdida¨ (lost), and that everyone in my community knows that I am alive. 

I'll close with a few new pictures.

My first complete homemade plato tipico: beans, egg, cheese, fried plantains, avocado, and tortillas.  Yum! 

Our first General Assembly meeting for CAMACO....



... I was seated at the mesa principal with the president (speaking) and mayor...

... and at the end received a diploma for my work (diplomas are big here).

Last night Tricia and I made penang curry with tofu and brown rice, and it was amazing!

La Banda

As most of you know, I am working with my municipality's band in hopeful preparation for our Independence Day parade on September 15.  This has been a process.  Here are my observations thus far.

Andrea's 10 Laws of Honduran Marching Bands:

1) The instrumentation of the band depends on the instruments available.  The number of students in the band also depends on the number of instruments available.

2) The instruments shall never be tuned.

3) If it is remotely long and slender and made of wood, metal, or plastic, it is an acceptable drumstick.

4) If you don't know how to play the instrument, just play random notes as loudly as possible.

5) Do not... I repeat, do NOT... give the big tall dopey-looking kid a low brass instrument (see law 4).

6) Don't play the trombone.  The slide will stick.  Hondurans fry everything in a vat of oil, but there's not a drop of slide oil to be found.

7) Any drum can be made into a marching drum by simply attaching a belt to it.

8) It is impossible to expain anything band-related in a 2nd language (for example, how to get a sound out of a clarinet).

9) Even if you can explain it in Spanish, don't bother trying to teach kids the clarinet.  If they manage to produce a sound, it will be inaudible in the cacophony (see law 5).

10) Have fun.  Wear earplugs.

Lo bueno

I've been informed that my last post seemed a little dark, so I want to assure everyone that things are great here, just wanted to switch things up a bit with some sarcasm.  It has been pouring here for about 3 days (welcome to rainy season in Honduras), so I'm a tad bored and eager to be able to go outside again without risk of a wipeout on the muddy road.

Plenty of exciting things have happened lately.  For example, my network of cajas (CAMACO) was just given a new office and computer, and my counterpart has been completely through the roof ever since.  He has been so giddy that he and some of the guys at the municipality are talking about taking me on a trip to see ¨all the nice parts of Honduras.¨  Not sure what that means.

Yesterday a couple of coworkers took me and Tricia to a town in Comayagua to pick up furniture from a departing volunteer.  We'll be moving into our apartments soon, so we're trying to get as much stuff as possible from other volunteers (table, chairs, pots/pans, appliances, etc).  We ended up taking back the volunteer's guitar, and had a singalong in the car on the way back - with the two songs that we had learned for the colegio chorus.  Too funny...

My town is building a new mall, and the two stores in front are the two major phone companies here, Tigo and Claro.  They've been in a marketing war for about a week now, blasting reggaeton, passing out promotional ads, and using large ballons and windsocks to attract people.  It's been entertaining.

The ex-president of Honduras, Mel Zelaya, also paraded through town a couple weekends ago, which caused quite a buzz.  Google him if you want the backstory.

I started working with an NGO called FIPAH last week - they are the ones that collaborate with the UNC/Nourish volunteers.  They took me to a small town to meet with a group of girls that just started a coffee cooperative.  I'm going to be giving them some business trainings, and we also played soccer for about an hour before it started to rain and I crapped out (everyone else kept playing).  Very authentic PC experience.

I'm also going to be collaborating with a new USAID project called ACCESO that is being implemented in the western part of Honduras.  Basically I'm going to be facilitating communication between all of the local governments and aid organizations that work with small businesses (mostly in agriculture), and help them enroll in this program.  I'll also probably help schedule and give trainings.  Have a look if you'd like!  http://www.usaid-acceso.org/

Saludos

Dear taxi drivers in Teguz,
I just got out of a taxi. I don't want another taxi.  If I did, I would not be getting out of this one.  Stop bombarding me.

Dear Rooster,
SHUT UP.  For the love of god.  It is 2am.

Dear host family,
French fries are not the same food group as sandwich bread.  When I have amoebic dysentery and ask for pan sandwich, please do not bring me papas fritas.

Dear dog shrouded in fleas,
I pity you, but get away from me.  You are probably covered in excrement.

Dear kid on bicycle,
Are you trying to swerve and kill me?  Because I'm trying to get out of your way.

Dear construction workers who piropo (cat call) me as I walk by,
You are lucky my Spanish isn't good enough to give you a piece of my mind.  Lucky.

Dear Hondurans,
You put a pound of sugar on all of your food, yet put salt on fruit?  It doesn't make sense.

Dear Rat,
You are dead to me for eating my chocolate.  I hope it kills you and you rot in rat hell.

Dear whoever drives down my street at 5am blasting reggaeton over a megaphone,
Seriously?  I mean, really.  SERIOUSLY?

Dear cows,
You are large and slow.  Get out from in front of our car.

Dear mutton-chopped, afroed, mustached campesino in oversized camo shirt, rain boots, sombrero, and tassled machete sheath,
You are awesome.  The world needs more of you.

Un cumpleaños, 3 pizzas, y la fumigación

Today was my host dad's birthday.  I had always been a little jealous of my friends who talked about host family birthdays, so I was excited to experience my first.

I've had a very busy week, working 2 days with Plan in their La Esperanza office (reminded me a lot of office days in SF, with the cooler temperatures, fast(er) internet, and a coffee maker).  The director and I are working on a new savings curriculum for youth, and I'm very excited about it!  I've also been going to nearby municipalities several times a week, so when I had the opportunity to take a lazy day today, I enjoyed it!

About mid afternoon, my host mom and sister summoned me to help make pizzas for the birthday.  I was scared at first because Hondurans typically use ketchup as their pasta/pizza sauce, but my family knows what they're doing, and it turned out to be delicious.  We had a lot of fun making the dough and sauce, and even stuffed the crust with quesillo!

All of a sudden, we heard a horrid noise and my host mom goes ¨vienen los fumigadores!¨ ... which translates to ¨the fumigators are coming!¨ Yes, here in Honduras (or at least my town) there are people that go around with what look like giant fiery leaf blowers, spraying each house with pesticide to kill the mosquitos.  (Picture someone barreling into your house without warning and spraying the whole thing with a fire extinguisher.)  They'd done it to the municipal building last Friday while I was there, so I knew what to expect... and I knew we needed to flee!

My Spanish suddenly got very good, as my host mom and I went into a panic.  We crammed the finished pizzas back into the oven on top of each other, put away all the plates and utensils, grabbed the cake, and ran outside.  I also darted back into my room to bag up all of my food and throw it under a sheet.  Between the panic and the smoke, it felt like we were fleeing a fire.

Flash forward 20 minutes, and we're all sitting outside, eating pizza and cake and drinking fresco as disgusting smoke billows out of the house.  Totally normal, except we have to cover our faces and sprint every time we need something from inside.  I guess that's what people do here... they improvise!  My host dad didn't seem to care.  I suppose his birthday gift was a reduced risk of getting malaria or dengue.

El Agua Sucia

I realize I haven't done much to describe my standard of living here, so I want to devote a quick blog to it.

You may have seen the recent ¨Live Like a PCV Challenge¨ site, so I will say that every volunteer's experience is different, and a lot of the worst-case-scenarios don't apply to me since I'm in a larger community.  For example, I have regular internet and am within 30 minutes of a giant supermarket that has just about every food I could want.  I baked Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Dream cookies last night, after looking up the recipe online.  Pretty posh in a lot of ways.

With that said, here are the realities of life in my site:

- Food: Living with a host family means eating their food, which means pounds and pounds of sugar.  On everything.  No one drinks water, just a ton of soda and super-sugary juices, and then coffee loaded with sugar.  Then there's mantequilla, which is basically a combo of butter and sour cream that you squeeze out of a pouch.  Fry up the beans with a stick of manteca (crisco, basically), then slather them with mantequilla.  Then fry up some plantains and douse them in mantequilla.  Yum!

(I will follow this by saying that I really like the non-fried food here, especially the plato tipico of beans, egg, plantains, cheese, and avocado with corn tortillas.  I'd just prefer it without the pound of mantequilla.)

- Bathroom: Cold showers, every day.  We don't always have running water in the evenings, so I often have to take bucket baths (using a larger bucket of stored water and then a smaller pail to pour it over yourself).  Might sound awful, but they are easy to get used to and actually save a lot of water.

Also no flushing toilet paper.  It's placed in a trash can next to the toilet.  When there's no water, you can flush the toilet manually using a bucket.

- Bugs: Mosquitos, biting ants, cockroaches, and these stupid winged creatures that divebomb me and my computer screen (my host family in Yuscaran called them palominos, no clue what their actual name is).  I have a mosquito net over my bed, which keeps most of the flying creatures away from me at night.

- Animals: Geckos abound (they chirp).  I have been lucky enough not to encounter a scorpion yet, but did see a mouse in my room the other day, as well as a fairly large frog.  The streets and yards are full of farm animals, which crow and bark and yelp at all hours of the day.  Hello, insomnia.

- Security: I am not allowed to leave my house after 8pm, and advised not to do much after dark.  Being a woman in this country is more difficult because of the machismo in the culture, and crime in Honduras is no joke.  My town is very safe by day, but most people stay in at night, especially women.

- Alcohol: Women in Honduras don't drink, except in big cities where it is more liberal.  As a result, I don't drink in my site.

- Religion: I go to church every Sunday that I'm in town.  It's amazing, but people really do respect me more for it.

- Electricity: My site is way better than Yuscaran in this respect, but every once in a while we do hear the dreaded phrase ¨se fue la luz.¨  The outages usually don't last more than a couple hours.

- Water: As you can guess from my amoeba episode, it's not good, certainly not drinkable.  We have running water most of the time, but during the dry season it stops between 7 and 8 every night and comes back around 3am.  Now that it's rainy season, we have water more hours of the day, but it's less predictable and a pretty consistent brown color.  I am lucky enough to have access to a washing machine, but even that won't get my white clothes clean.  I gave up trying.

So, I suppose to conclude, if you want to take an Andrea-specific Peace Corps challenge, put a pound of sugar on all of your food (except fruit, which takes salt instead), fry everything in a tub of butter, don't leave your house after 8, don't drink, go to church, tie a rooster to the foot of your bed, and bathe in cold, dirty water.  However, you are allowed to gchat all day and bake cookies.  It's really not that bad, I promise!

Amigos

I don't want to gloss over the past few weeks here, but I also don't want to post a novel.  So let's see if I can keep this interesting!

The 2 performances that I mentioned in the last post were outrageous.  The first was at a culture night, and Tricia and I helped accompany the chorus in a traditional song.  No video, unfortunately.

The following week I got to spend 3 days in Tegucigalpa for a Volunteer Advisory Council (VAC) meeting, where one representative from each training group meets with the country director and staff to discuss PC policy.  It was really interesting, especially in light of the recent budget cuts (thanks, Congress) and the restructuring that will be happening in PC Honduras.  Our group is the last business project group, and the next training class that comes this month is only 15 people.

These trips to Teguz are especially fun because there are always volunteers passing through, and we can enjoy supermarkets, malls, and good food.  The highlights of the trip for me were bagels, crepes and Irish coffee, and semi-sweet chocolate chips (you can find milk chocolate chips at most supermarkets, but semi-sweet are hard to find).

The night we got back from Teguz, Tricia and I had our final chorus rehearsal to prepare for the Día de Estudiante performance the following morning.  We'd practiced the songs quite a bit, but were shocked to find out 12 hours before the event that we would also be performing 2 dances: the twist, and a traditional Lencan dance.  Panic!  For the traditional dance, we were a couple.  I was the man.

If nothing else, my time in Peace Corps will completely kill my shyness/inhibition. I thought the TV interviews and piano playing were embarrassing... try dressing up as a man with a painted-on fake beard and dancing in front of an entire high school of students!

After that ridiculousness, things settled down a little.  This weekend was a mushroom and wine festival in La Esperanza, which was a fun time.  The wine was really gross, but the chorros (mushrooms) were good.  La Esperanza is up in the mountains, so it is significantly cooler than my town (which has been even hotter than usual this week) and I always love going there!

Our town is now home to 3 volunteers from Amigos de las Americas, which is an organization that sends high school and college students to Latin American to volunteer for the summer.  We took the volunteers under our wing a little bit, but they are doing pretty well on their own!  Totally overshadowing us in some ways.  Yesterday they organized a 4th of July gathering and made mac and cheese and funfetti cake.  We invited the UNC students who are here for the summer and the bilingual school staff, and it wound up being a great time!  When I applied to Peace Corps I never imagined spending the 4th of July with 10 other gringos that live in my site... but no complaints!